camerondietrich

Judi Dench's extraordinary Indian summer continues with a heartbreaking performance as the late novelist Iris Murdoch. Her portrayal of a great mind succumbing to the ravages of Alzheimer's is unbearably moving, but it's let down a little by a lack of dramatic momentum and Richard Eyre's unambitious direction.

Bouncing back and forth between Murdoch's early days at Oxford and her deterioration four decades later, "Iris" tells of its heroine's enduring love for John Bayley, a fellow academic who wrote the memoirs upon which the script was based.

Played by Kate Winslet, the younger Iris is a vivacious intellectual with penchants for nude swimming and casual sex. What she sees in the bookish, stammering Bayley (Bonneville) is a mystery, but that doesn't stop her taking him into her bed, and into her heart.

The situation is reversed in the present day, with the now-elderly Bayley (Broadbent) forced to become a virtual parent to his addled wife. Unfortunately, because we are asked to take Murdoch's genius on trust, the impact of her tragedy is reduced. Indeed, the ping-pong structure of the narrative unwittingly implies her condition might even be some karmic retribution for her adolescent promiscuity.

Dench and Winslet inhabit the role of Iris with such intensity it's hard to take your eyes off them. But it would be an injustice not to recognise the contributions of Broadbent and Bonneville. In addition to their astonishing physical resemblance, they ensure the bumbling Bayley is no mere caricature of selfless devotion.

Unfortunately, Big Bad Love, for all its undeniably good anti-mainstream intentions, fails to come off even as the cutting-edge manifestation it tries so strenuously to be. Mr. Howard directs himself as a long-failed writer named Barlow, who keeps mailing manuscripts to various publishers and getting them all back with a variety of rejection letters. The returned manila envelopes bulk large in his rustic roadside mail box. But no matter: Barlow keeps stuffing the box with new manila envelopes. Words keep floating around his head, and even on the screen and on the soundtrack. Even big words you never expect to hear in the Mississippi hill country, except when you remember that you're very close to William Faulkner land and a rich Southern prose tradition that is to American literature almost what 20th-century Irish drama is to 20th-century British theater. And Barlow himself is not simply a fictional figure, but also an approximation of the thought processes of writer Larry Brown.

Big Bad Love actually begins deceptively, with fleeting glances of a bridal couple laughingly fornicating in a bathtub. When a fully dressed Barlow emerges in sleepy, grimy solitude to answer the door, we realize with the help of some pointed dialogue that we have been misled by an idealized memory of Barlow's long-ago marriage to Marilyn (Ms. Winger), from whom he is now separated. Currently, Barlow's only steady companion is a much-married layabout named Monroe (Paul Le Mat) who gets house-painting jobs for Barlow, shares his beer binges and flirts with Velma (Rosanna Arquette), a petty heiress he finally marries.

Barlow receives occasional visits from Marilyn when she drops off their two children for a paternal visit. Alan, the older of the two, keeps his emotional distance from his father, but Alisha is suffering from an incurable disease that foreshadows one of the catastrophes that is going to transform Barlow into a productive writer, much to the surprise of Marilyn and his mother, played by Angie Dickinson.

When you think about it, Big Bad Love has one of the strongest casts you will see in movies this year–and not a bankable one among them. In addition to Ms. Winger, Mr. Howard, Mr. Le Mat, Ms. Dickinson and Ms. Arquette, there is Michael Parks being remarkable in a grizzled cracker-barrel part. And you think some more, and you begin to understand what Ms. Winger hates about Hollywood and all its who's-hot-and-who's-not arbiters of talent, with a calendar in one hand and an adding machine in the other. I simply can't believe that an actress as gifted as Ms. Winger can't find a decent role to play in her mid-40's. The camera can be cruel, granted, but in Europe an actress of Ms. Winger's caliber would be kept busy in grown-up movies.

Ultimately, though Big Bad Love is not without misfortunes and misadventures, it is mercifully free of malignancy. And though the writer as hero is not an ideal movie subject, it is nothing if not morally refreshing.

A nice, sane movie that never quite gets off the ground is Stanley & Iris. Well-made and well-acted as it is, it seems unlikely to catch fire in any other context.

The opening reels, which are richer and more sophisticated in tone than the rest of the picture, promise much. As a recently widowed New England bakery worker who is supporting her children as well as her unemployed sister and her loutish husband, Jane Fonda captures just the right tone of can't-be-bothered weariness.

She's appalled at the behavior of her brother-in-law, who slaps her sister (Swoosie Kurtz) in front of the children, and she's shaken when her unmarried teen-age daughter (Martha Plimpton) turns out to be pregnant. But she's almost too busy grieving to react in an effective manner.

The only distraction in her life is a budding friendship with a cafeteria worker (Robert De Niro) who turns out to be illiterate. After a series of personal disasters brought about by his inability to read, he asks her to teach him, they visit the library together, and one thing leads to another. His pride and her attachment to her dead husband occasionally get in the way, but everything works out.

Nevertheless, Stanley & Iris is quite tolerable as a star vehicle. Fonda and De Niro, who reportedly didn't get along famously off-screen, keep an interesting tension going on-screen. Occasionally they pull off a good scene - like the one in which De Niro loses his way as he tries to read street signs - that suggests how much better this movie could have been.

What's Up Doc? is a film so hysterically funny that it should be made freely available to everyone on the National Health Service. So should basic health care you might well retort. This cinematic anti-depressant - the filmic equivalent to Prozac - is one of the most skilful updates of thirties screwball comedy, particularly of Howard Hawks and especially Bringing Up Baby.

The plot revolves around four identical tartan suitcases containing secret government papers, a cache of jewels, a rock collection, and some personal items; and the ensuing entanglement of spies and thieves intent on stealing the contents of the suitcases but inevitably picking the wrong one. Caught up in the mandatory mayhem are absent minded musicologist Ryan O'Neal and wild eccentric Barbara Streisand. The fast paced verbal wit and visual slapstick crescendoes into an incredible car chase through San Francisco, a mixture of Buster Keaton, Mack Sennett and the Road Runner cartoons with a dig at the jumping cars in Bullitt thrown in for good measure.

The pace of the film is quicker than a fast thing in a hurry but Bogdanovich balances out the screwball antics with some nicely understated character comedy: the hotel manager, and the judge in the final reel for example. The acting of Streisand is exemplary, but O'Neal is too bland and at one point he bears an uncanny resemblance to Bugs Bunny. Although not as mind-bogglingly perfect as, say, Bringing Up Baby (the original and best) What's Up Doc? is guaranteed to have you in stitches.

The script and cast (with the exception of Ryan O'Neal) are excellent, the direction and comedy staging are outstanding, and there are literally reels of pure, unadulterated and sustained laughs.

The Misfits is a story about people for whom the world spins just a little too quickly, who as a result feel constantly off kilter and unable to find their footing. This collaboration between acclaimed playwright Arthur Miller and director John Huston, while not without flaw, is a consistently engaging study of the inevitable death by degrees of the faux values of the American Dream.

Guys like Gay (Clark Gable) are littered throughout small towns across North America - these are folks who remember how it 'Used to Be,' and who feel lost in the New World Order, where the sort of machismo that manifests itself in wrestling 800 pound stallions to the ground single-handedly is no longer a ruling concern. Gay's mantra, `Better than wages, ain't it?' is a paean to a simpler time when free men didn't have to work for The Man, but could take care of themselves, thanks very much.

Roslyn (Marilyn Monroe), on the other hand, is a more rare bird: flighty and sensuous, beautiful and beaten, she is this world's canary in the coalmine. This is easily Monroe's finest work in a serious role, a tremulous and delicate performance. Gay and Roslyn are an unlikely pair, but it is the nature of The Misfits' philosophical fatalism that they are thrust together, their discordant outlooks providing conflict and hinting at thematic resolution.

The Misfits was the last film of its stars Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, and they couldn't have asked for a better send-off. Gable, looking gaunt and time-ravaged, manhandles the role of Gay with his devilish good looks and disarming charm. To play Roslyn, it is clear that Monroe held up a mirror, as she plays the part with the nervousness and flightiness of a wild mustang. She conveys such tangible sensitivity to other's pain that you don't have to be Kreskin to foresee her sad fate.

An above-par courtroom drama, set in Los Angeles, elevated by director/screenwriter Clifford Odets' sharp script. He originally intended for this work to be a play. It was also elevated by an outstanding cast, with special kudos to Rita Hayworth's warm portrayal of a woman in an abusive marriage and by Sanford Meisner's forceful and expressive performance as the cross-examing prosecutor.

The bulk of the film takes place in the courtroom and since we immediately see the crime, we know that it was an accident and therefore the tension in the film comes about in finding out if the two lovebirds accused of murdering her husband will be given a death sentence, because the circumstances point to their guilt.

The beauty in the film is in the long-drawn-out courtroom dramatics.

The story itself wasn't too interesting, but the performances were energetic and the film had a good courtroom style, enough to make this chatty film well worth seeing.

In "Sudden Fear" the legendary Joan Crawford portrays Myra Hudson, an heiress-turned successful playwright. When Myra becomes the toast of the town, she marries charismatic actor Lester Blaine. But what she believes to be a blissful marriage turns into a nightmare when Myra discovers that Lester wed her only for money and plans to kill her. So, using the imagination of a skilled dramatist, Myra devises her own devilish plan to get back at Lester.

This is a mediocre film with a hack of an ending. Crawford's performance was nominated for an Academy Award and, thankfully, she lost the prized statue. She is overly melodramatic and her costumes accentuate her masculine qualities.

For whatever it is worth, if you like Crawford, you'll have a so-so time watching this film.

Rosalind Russell is most-mentioned when Gypsy, the life story of famed Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, but Natalie Wood is really the show-stealer as the titular character. Her nuanced performance as a Vaudevillian, thrust into stripping after its death, puts Russell's shrieking Mama Rose to shame. Not that she isn't good, but hey, how do you compete on screen with Ms. Wood? While the story is solid, mainly tracing Gypsy's time as a child being carted around the country by mom and Karl Malden's candy salesman in an attempt to Make It Big, the music is weak overall, with but two numbers ("Let Me Entertain You" and "Everything's Coming Up Roses") being even remotely memorable.

Based on the naughty Broadway hit and featuring luscious tunes by Rodgers and Hart, Pal Joey was softened from his arrogant heel stage persona for this more sanitized film version. Now-good guy Joey (Sinatra) wants to open a swanky nightclub in San Francisco, enlisting the help of high society dame Vera Simpson (Hayworth), a former chorus girl. But things get sticky when Joey finds his eyes drifting towards the knockout Linda English (Novak). A leggy singer/dancer with aspirations of being a star, Linda also has a soft place in her heart for Joey. Of course, complications abound, along with much singing and dancing, before tying up nicely with a bouncy, breezy, "walking into the sunset" Hollywood finish.

A couple of assets make Pal Joey unbeatable entertainment. The first are the wonderful Rodgers and Hart standards, mostly performed by Sinatra. Sinatra is at his all-time best.

This was Hayworth's last big movie musical and she does not disappoint. Although actually younger than Sinatra, she was playing a role originally meant for Marlene Dietrich. Hayworth is both gorgeous and haunting. A must see for all Hayworth fans!